


speak soft, and i will follow

by ruthlesslistener



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [3]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Birthplace Cutscene (alt perspective), Canon-Typical Child Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Dehumanization, Gen, Godly Bullfuckery, Mind Control, Mind Manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:41:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22624957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruthlesslistener/pseuds/ruthlesslistener
Summary: Bad Things Happen Bingo Prompt 3: Compelling VoiceCome.It needed to get out. The darkness was crushing. Its entire body pulled on the hook, the strings attached to it, a soft instinct-driven thing of shadow tugged through the tunnels. Empty, empty. In body and mind. Needed to be filled. Empty down here, nothing but darkness and death.And from all around the edges of the precipice, the bodies of siblings rained down, and broke, and loosed more darkness unto the world.Come, empty ones. Come to me.
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1531121
Comments: 5
Kudos: 77





	speak soft, and i will follow

**Author's Note:**

> Hahahaaa I actually managed to make this a drabble for once, probably bc I'm posting it now before I think to hard about it. Gotta get that card filled out somehow, and 12k 'snippets' aren't the way to do that

It awoke in darkness.

Darkness, all around. Darkness, crushing. It needed out. It needed to get out. It didn’t know why. But it kicked and scratched and wriggled until its horns caught on something, and it tore and scratched until that broke and it fell out, into more darkness, a darkness that poked at the soft pads of its feet and its new wing covers as it struggled to rise.

Life. Compulsion. Movement became a necessity, the stillness of void sloughing away. New body, soft shell. Void dissipating, leaving coldness behind. Sensation. Awareness

The need ebbed. It stood, still and blank, staring out at the surroundings around it. Darkness, still crushing, but different. Sharper. Broken shell and mask diluting the dark, smudging it to grey spotted with bleak, staring sockets

It felt something wriggling behind it, another breaking free of the old darkness, and looked back on instinct; a black, mirrored shell was the sight that greeted it, broken bits of it scattered around from where others before it broke free. And from the old darkness, siblings, kicking and wriggling to escape, stark white masks shining bleakly out from under the sticky bits of egg and void that stained them. Siblings that climbed free and stared blankly out at the world around them, heads turning and turning, siblings that stumbled free and then collapsed instantly, fluid leaking from their eye sockets, dribbling out from under their masks. Siblings that stumbled out of the cradle containing their eggs and let out a broken, haunting cry, their faces turning about and around as they wailed and searched. Those were the ones that leaked the most, not the pure black coldness of Void but a strange white mist like their masks that wavered and dissipated before they collapsed to join the empty masks below, bodies stilling as they fell apart under the pressure of the world outside the circle.

It stood, and watched through the sockets of its mask, and waited. There was a tunnel through the dead bodies and eggshells. A sharp tunnel. An exit. Some tried to crawl for it, and dashed their soft new bodies to bits before they even finished drying. Others waited, and watched. Empty dark eyes stared at nothing, at something, at nothing again.

_ Come.  _

A reverberation through the walls, a whisper. It wound its way down through the emptiness yawning in its mind and hooked deep within the darkness within, drawing it forward, stumbling blindly towards the tunnel. It did not feel the horns and mask shards digging into its body as it climbed its way out of the pit. It did not feel the weight of its siblings as they tried to squirm out and fell, cutting themselves open on shards below. There was nothing but the whispering pull of that voice, drawing it forward. Filling the emptiness with purpose and intent.

It needed to get out. The darkness was crushing. Its entire body pulled on the hook, the strings attached to it, a soft instinct-driven thing of shadow tugged through the tunnels. Empty, empty. In body and mind. Needed to be filled. Empty down here, nothing but darkness and death.

_ Come.  _

A wall, dead siblings heavier higher than they were in the egg shells. A sibling shoved by it. They pushed and shoved their way through with their horns and paws, wriggling the rest of themselves out after, and it followed, near-crushed in the swarm of hatchlings trying to claw their way free. Unstable ground slipped below, and it almost tripped and fell, but it managed to catch itself before that. The open range of the birthplace stretched out before it, dark and heavy with void, crawling with creatures with bright orange eyes and things that weren’t. Things that looked like siblings, but dark, inversed. Bright white eyes shining out of a black void face. Broken. Useless. Unwanted, in this empty wide space that yawned larger than the whole world.

There was a light shining far above, past ledges and spikes. A light familiar and alien, different from the darkness around it. A light like the glow of the masked siblings. Bright. Full. Compelling. Alive. 

Painful.

And from all around the edges of the precipice, the bodies of siblings rained down, and broke, and loosed more darkness unto the world.

_ Come, empty ones. Come to me. _

The hooks tightened and pulled, and it threw itself at one of the ledges, fresh claws scrambling at the rock. Up, up, it needed to go up. The voice echoed, the puppet strings tugging them up, up towards the spikes, the crawling scratching creatures, the bodies of dead siblings. Up it went, paws raked by the stone, by the shards of chitin littering the edges. The ache in them went unheeded. It was not fatal, not worth attention, and the voice would not let it stop anyways. It did not need to stop. It needed to go up, up to the light, up to the whisper and the nourishing glow of life and soul.

So it dug its soft little claws into the stone and bled.

A sibling rushed by it, hasty with desperation, and a crawling thing with orange eyes brushed by them on its way down the rock, sharp back scales slicing deep into a leg. They staggered, slipping against the whorls of stone and fossil, and fell, arms flailing uselessly. Their body slammed into it, mask breaking open with a  _ crack  _ that rang pain through its head, and it nearly fell with them, a reflexive leap to a new ledge the only thing that saved it. The sibling that fell shuddered, then went still- from its blank, staring eyes, from the crack in its head, Void slowly streamed, until there was another little shadow drifting through the abyss, bright eyes searching for something that it could never reach. 

_ Void, you are the power opposed. Void, Our will tethers you.  _

_ Bring forth to Us one without mind.  _

It did not have time to watch. The shadow that was a sibling did not give chase, and every whisper stirring the still shadow of its thoughts was like another blow upon it. It became numb to the pull of rocks in its flesh. The crunching of the sibling’s masks faded into white noise, even as more fell, as shadow creepers pushed hatchlings from ledges and the spikes tore others to pieces before they had a chance to rise again. 

_ Bring forth to Us one without will.  _

More hooks in its mind, in its flesh, and its pace increased, following a rhythm to the leaping and the climbing that carried it up as fast as possible. The creepers went unnoticed. The spikes posed little threat. The shades were to be ignored.

The bodies continued to rain down, endless, eternal. Some looked down to watch them die. Some looked up to see them fall. Failures. Unwanted, and they fell too, before long. 

There was nothing but the climb. 

_ Bring forth to Us one without voice.  _

The words hit like a blow, and above it another hatchling staggered and slipped, falling uselessly down below. Others fell with it, more and more, some emitting strange, muffled shrieks as they flailed uselessly to their deaths. Some hunched down and stopped climbing altogether, shivering, and it climbed over their still bodies before the shadow creepers could come around the corner and push all of them off as well.

Less were above now. The glow was blinding. It didn’t need sight to sense the empty space between its jumps, but others did. More fell. More death.

_ Bring forth to Us a child of God. Bring forth to Us a child of Void. _

**_Bring forth to Us a Vessel._ **

More bindings around it, more hooks in its mind, pulling it forward. There was nothing above now. There was only the light, and it hurled itself forward on wings of ethereal matter that it didn’t even know it had and clung, hard, to the last ledge separating it from the light. 

The creature within the light lowered its arms as it scrambled up, but did not move towards it, the multitude of its limbs folding back under its robes. Its face was a death-white mask. Its eyes were dark pits. Just like the siblings, but Its cape was long and dragging, Its shell pure white. Soul. Not Void. Its horns formed a crown, gossamer wings flared bright and proud, and all around It, more white light gleamed, in runes and mist, summoning and repelling. Pure.

Death. Life. Creator.

Kin.

_...Father? _

The wings folded back, disappearing into the robes as if they had never existed. The bright light dimmed, the strange aching pressure in the back of its head fading with it. Slowly, He moved towards it, sliding closer with a strange, slithering grace, and tipped His head down to look at it. A claw extended out from the robes towards it, then pulled back; He looked upon its small, blank form without touching it, and slowly the press of His voice began to glow through its mind, the summoning tethers hooked in its shade slackening with His presence.

And then He began to speak, and each word was like the ringing of a bell in its head, chiming down through the void of its being until its whole body trembled with it, heavy with the mantle that He placed upon its shoulders.

_ No cost too great. _

_ No mind to think. _

_ No will to break. _

_ No voice to cry suffering. _

_ Born of God and Void. _

_ You shall seal the blinding light that plagues their dreams. _

_ You are the Vessel. _

_ You are the Hollow Knight. _

Pride suffused His voice as He named it, and it was like a blow in of itself. From the Abyss it had crawled, empty and numb in its newness, and now it was branded and weighted with responsibilities that filled it with the first hint of warmth it had felt since its hatching. It had succeeded. It was the first. It was not a failure, like the others, like the fathomless countless endless others. 

He who was  _ God/Creator/Destroyer/Father/Killer  _ turned away, sparing it a glance over His shoulder as if He feared that it would fall back into the Abyss. Into its undoing. 

_ Come with me. _

And away He walked, into the light beyond the world. And for a moment it stood, and watched, blindly trying to fumble through the warmth slowly dissipating from its mind, before the tethers caught hold of it again and grew taut, before the light speared its eyes and burned again.

The tethers pulled. Forward. It needed to go forward. It needed to follow the King. 

From behind it, shuffling. Soft steps on rock. Another? 

It should not have looked back. The King had not looked back. There was nothing for it here, this deathpit that was the whole world before it had been chosen. A truly hollow being would not have looked back.

It looked back.

It didn’t know why it did it. The scrambling meant nothing. It had not watched when the others fell, had not paid anymore attention to them than it did the shadow creepers. The King had not looked back at the void below, only checked to ensure that it would follow. The King’s will was its own.

There was a sibling clinging to the ledge, the only other one of its clutch that had made the climb.

Into its eyes they stared damnation, their weak little paws barely clinging to the cold metal ledge. Too late, they were far too late now. The King had chosen. The King’s will was law. It could do nothing for it, failed little damned one, and there was nothing but static in its mind as the wires grew taut, and it followed the King out into the daylight. Nothing but hollowness in its chest as the King raised his hand and spoke A Word, and the door to the Abyss sealed shut, locking the other inside. Leaving it to its death.

Later, it would wish it had never been chosen. Later, much later, when the ugliness inside itself reared its head. Later, when the flaw corrupting it showed itself. When the light tore it apart from the insides and its dreams were plagued with the little one lost to the Abyss, coming to them too late, form flickering, writhing with the Void it left behind. Later, when the King was dead and the scraps of life and love he gave them withered away, turned to sickness and infection beneath their skin. Later, when his softly-whispered words turned to cinder, burned away under the Radiance’s mockery. 

But for now it turned, mind blank, and obeyed the will of its King.

**Author's Note:**

> If it wasn't apparent, when the Pale King started using the royal 'we' he was casting a spell. I didn't think that all the vessels in the Abyss died just via falling, but I also found it highly unlikely that he killed them directly (he's very much a hands-off, neglectful killer imo), so I figured that he just made it so that all the Vessels that had some idea that they were imperfect lost their grip or staggered, and died from the creepers/falling to their deaths
> 
> This was not...really a memory, per se? I imagine adult Hollow to be much more eloquent than this. I guess you can view it as either Hollow looking back on themselves being chosen, or it as it actually happens. idk y'all I'm just throwing words together like salad over here


End file.
